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When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolknski went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.
“Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree with you?” he asked.
And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give him an answer.
“Yes, I think so,” he said reluctantly, and left the study.
The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to Nicholas.
“Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally,” he said, pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.
Nicholas started angrily.
“All right, all right,” he said, throwing the bits under the table.
And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away from the boy.
“You ought not to have been here at all,” he said.
The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best—recollections of 1812. Densov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly terms.
After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her table, writing.
“What are you writing, Mary?” Nicholas asked.
Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing would not be understood or approved by her husband.
She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would now have to tell him.
“A diary, Nicholas,” she replied, handing him a blue exercise book filled with her firm, bold writing.
“A diary?” Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up the book.
It was in French.
December 4. Today when Andrsha (her eldest boy) woke up he did not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse’s help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by tenderness.
“What is a ‘ticket’?” Nicholas inquired.
“I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how they have behaved.”
Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down everything in the children’s lives that seemed noteworthy to their mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections on educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now that he read this diary about his children for the first time.
Under the date “5” was entered:
Mtya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.
Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of his admiration for his wife.
Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the sole aim was the children’s moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his reach, in which she had her being.
He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of himself.
“I quite, quite approve, my dearest!” said he with a significant look, and after a short pause he added: “And I behaved badly today. You weren’t in the study. We began disputing—Pierre and I—and I lost my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don’t know what would become of him if Natsha didn’t keep him in hand.... Have you any idea why he went to Petersburg? They have formed...”
“Yes, I know,” said Countess Mary. “Natsha told me.”
“Well, then, you know,” Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere recollection of their discussion, “he wanted to convince me that it is every honest man’s duty to go against the government, and that the oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren’t there. They all fell on me—Densov and Natsha... Natsha is absurd. How she rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words of her own but only repeats his sayings...” added Nicholas, yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natsha could have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.
“Yes, I have noticed that,” said Countess Mary.
“When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there—what would you have said?”
“As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natsha so. Pierre says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,” said Countess Mary, “but he forgets that we have other duties nearer to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children.”
